Tag: Blue Dogs

You may have heard that our center-right nation got enthusiastic, formed a grassroots movement called a tea party, and overwhelmingly voted in a more rightwing party, sending hordes of nasty socialists packing as a result of their overly progressive performance, meaning gridlock between the righteous Congress and the infidel president for the next two years. There are some problems with this story, beginning with the fact that it’s completely false.

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As Karen Dolan blogged about immediately after Tuesday’s elections, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — over 80 members — lost only 3 seats. The Cut-Spending-Except-For-Killing Blue Dogs had 54 members and lost 26 of them, and those 26 were their true believers. Congress members, including one or two real progressives, didn’t lose by being progressive but by being Democrats. Alan Grayson was defeated by the largest investment of corporate money in any House race, but the obedient corporatist Democrat in the next district over lost too. And this was despite the Democratic Party funding and supporting the Blue Dogs, leaving the progressives to raise their own money.

Tea Party candidates, in contrast to progressives, did not have a successful day on Tuesday. Their nominees’ craziness cost the Republican Party control of the Senate. Yet the whole corporate-funded smoke-and-mirrors “movement” of the Tea Party pushed the Republican Party as a whole to the right, in a way that no well-funded institution has pushed the Democrats to the left or even tried to. And this is the key lesson: pushing the Democrats to the left would save them from themselves.

On Thursday Amy Goodman at Democracy Now spoke with CPC Co-Chair Raul Grijalva about the CPC not only holding it’s own with a loss of only 4 seats in the mid terms, but coming out of the elections holding the relative largest plurality of all groups in Congress.

The Democrats lost the majority in the US House of Representatives in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but what is the makeup of the new Democratic House caucus? The conservative Blue Dogs lost half their members, while the Progressive Caucus remains near eighty. We speak to its co-chair, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who appears to have retained his seat in a close election in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. Over the past year, Grijalva has received numerous threats, including having a suspicious package covered in swastikas sent to his office and having a bullet shot through his district office in Yuma, Arizona.

Speaker Pelosi pulled a brilliant move at the end of the last weeks legislative session.

House Democrats are home for a long Memorial Day break with a gift-wrapped wedge issue delivered just in time for district campaigning. One of their final actions before adjourning late Friday was passing a measure that would strip tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas by a 215-204 vote.

I really don’t have the time to write this up, but I wanted to draw your attention to this series on HuffPo. In is quite an indepth, inside look and well worth the whole read. Despite the cheerleading, there are pissed-off liberals. We are not alone. Enjoy.

Doug Kahn, a big Democratic donor and heir to the Annenberg fortune, is not giving any money to candidates running for office this year even though he has donated more than $200,000 to candidates in past election cycles.

“The people who are really liberal, like me, are disgusted. And the ones I’ve talked to are just saying, forget this. They’re throwing their hands up. They’re not going to give money,” says Kahn.

In 2008, says Kahn, he asked the DCCC to list candidates who had an outside shot of beating a Republican and weren’t currently getting much party backing. He jumped in and gave the maximum contributions, donating to several of the 34 Democrats who voted against health care reform. In 2010, he says, he’ll spend his money in a different way. “Anger is a real motivator,” says Kahn.

The Florida donor plans to spend $100,000 between two districts currently held by Blue Dogs. He’ll come in during the last few weeks and spend money educating Democratic voters about the Blue Dogs’ record. “I’m convinced that if they know what the voting records of some of these people are — that is, Blue Dogs — a significant percentage, a percentage that could beat the Blue Dog, will simply not vote. I might be wrong about that, but I’m going to try it out,” says Kahn.

Kahn says he doesn’t yet know which districts he’ll attack and has no interest working to defeat a Blue Dog who is already going to lose. He wants Blue Dogs on the edge and he wants to push them off. The purpose, he says, is not to teach those particular dogs a lesson, but “to move the Blue Dogs who are in the House to have some fear of Democratic voters.”

Pelosi worked to muzzle progressives who said they could never vote for the watered-down Senate version. “I told the members, the members who said, ‘I’m never voting the Senate bill,’ I said, ‘Fine. Let me take care of that, but to the extent that you go out and say that, you are empowering the insurance industry and those who are trying to say just do a small bill,” she said. “That empowered them: ‘See, she’s never going to be able to pass the bill, so why don’t we just go for this thing, which happens to be what the insurance company is advocating.’ So we’re saying, ‘No, you have to have the courage to go for it, and what is it that we can put over the finish line that is strong and tough as possible, giving the president his opportunity to strive for bipartisanship?”

The Republican wing of the Democratic party. The Blue Dogs. The ConservaDems. These assholes licked Bush’s fingers for a taste of his dinner and now they are biting Obama’s hand every time he reaches out to them. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!

So here is the deal. I already despise the Corporatist sell out Blue Cross/ Blue Shield dogs. They undermine Democratic ideas and damage our brand, and if they stay quiet and out of the way I can suffer them, but mark my words . . . .

If BlueDogs sink HCR I will put my foot so far up their a$$es they’ll be flossing with my shoelaces

This will be a short diary, as what I have to say is fairly simple. Any politician who votes NO on this bill is officially my mortal enemy. They are rooting for my illness and poverty at best, and my death at worse. Why? Because they do not represent people, but instead they represent the greedy, bloodthirsty insurers, and the profit motive for a politician who does the insurers bidding is the bribe of campaign donations, all so the insurers can keep making their blood money profits. FUCK THAT AND FUCK THEM.

With that being said, I can safely say that PeanutButterPAC will do it’s best to kick the ass of every NO vote on this Health Care Bill so hard their asses will be up near their armpits, and if you want to join up and help us, the more the better.

I am sorry. I really want a universal health care system. Here is my take. All voluntary reconstructive surgery will be taxed at 10% of the bill, the tax to be paid into the US Treasury. This tax will not apply to reconstructive surgery from injury nor disease.

Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami emailed us late last night to assert that no final decisions have been made on the shape of the public option: “It is inaccurate for anyone to assert that the Speaker or the Leadership has determined the form of the public option. How we move forward on the public option will continue to be discussed by the Leadership and the Caucus, which will meet on Thursday.”

Didn’t Take very long for this bullshit to happen. Shoulda seen it coming.

Sept 22, 2009Speaker Pelosi is nixing a deal she cut with centrists to advance health reform, said a source familiar with negotiations.

Pelosi’s decision to abandon the agreement that was made with a group of Blue Dogs to get the bill out of committee would steer the healthcare legislation back to the left as she prepares for a floor vote.

Pelosi is planning to include a governmentrun public option in the House version of the healthcare bill. She wants to model it on Medicare,- with providers getting reimbursed on a scale pegged to Medicare rates.-

It was a VERY good day for Progressives in DC and working class Americans today. Pelosi has shot down her deal with the Blue Dogsthe MAYO Clinic is going to support a Public Option and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IO) has said that he is now VERY confident that a Public Option will make it to the President’s desk in Health Care Reform.

Hell, even Harry Reid grew some temporary spine and said that a 51 majority vote will be used to pass health care reform if all else fails.

Let’s see who long Harry’s new found vertebrae lasts.

So, all in all it is a good day for Progressives politically, and working class Americans everywhere as we push harder for a Progressive agenda that benefits working class Americans FIRST.

Let’s hope more good news is coming soon. I could get used to writing happy diaries like this am getting f#$king sick and tired of this BULLSHIT

When he was asking Americans to vote for him during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said . . .

We’re looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington. It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face, whether those problems are health care that folks can’t afford or a mortgage they cannot pay.

Before Obama appointed Wall Street insiders to run his economic policies and a Blue Dog to be his chief of staff, he told us . . .

Make no mistake about what we’re up against. We’re up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem and this election is our chance to say that we are not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

Obama’s not only letting them stand in our way, he’s helping them stand in our way. He let lobbyists write the Senate Finance Committee bill. He campaigned for the public option, but now he’s caving to the Republicans and Blue Dogs who are telling us we can’t have it. They’ve viciously attacked the public option from the very beginning and they’re continuing to viciously attack it.

When he needed our votes, Obama condemned the very people he’s caving to now . . .

There are those who will continue to tell us that we can’t do this, that we can’t have what we’re looking for, that we can’t have what we want. But here is what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of that elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day, an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside the envelope.

I’m not sure what you think you know, Obama, but here’s what she knows–she knows what Democrats used to stand for, she knows what they must stand for again. She remembers when FDR showed America what real change looks like, she remembers him winning the fight for economic and social justice . . .

From a wheel chair.

FDR’s legs were paralyzed, but his moral courage wasn’t, his heart wasn’t, his determination to fight for the Americans who elected him wasn’t. Unlike you, Obama, FDR wasn’t paralyzed by moral cowardice, he didn’t reach out to Republicans, he didn’t compromise with the liars and hypocrites of that degenerate party, he governed as a Democrat because that’s what he promised he would do.

That elderly woman who sent you $3.01 remembers when Democrats were actually Democrats, she knows how desperately America needs another Democratic President like FDR. She believed in you, Obama. She trusted you. She had faith in you. She believed you when you told her last fall, when you told all of us last fall that . . .

We’re up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. But we know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics. This is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore. This is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.

You’re throwing that chance away, Obama. You’re letting the losers of that election kill reform, you’re shattering the trust so many Americans had in you, you’re giving us no reason to believe that anything will really change.

Well, The System’s Broken […] Certainly I don’t accept, in the richest county on Earth, that we should have 47 Million people without Health Insurance, and Millions of more people being bankrupted because of a Medical Bill.

[…]

As President of the United States, what I’ve proposed to do, is to make sure that we got a plan that covers ALL Americans.

[…]

The key to making this happen, is to overcome the resistance we’re going to see from Drug Companies, Insurance Companies, HMO’s. Over the last 10 years alone, Drug and Insurance Companies spent over $1 Billion, in preventing Health Care Reform from happening. That’s going to require then, a mobilization of energy among the American People, to insist on a Congress and a White House, that are actually going to deliver this time.

“But those voters won’t vote for a candidate that is that liberal/ much of a Democrat!” other say.

Bullshit.

No one woke up on 11-4-08 and said “I want to vote for a Democratic Congressman who will undermine Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and side with Bush Conservatives on every major issue! Yay! Change!”

First of all, I’d like to say thank you to all of those who have written a Health Care Horror Story diary, and I’d like to encourage others to do the same and write their personal horror stories for others to see. The more of these articles we can post on teh toobz, the more we can reveal the true national horror that our for-profit Murder By Spreadsheet industry inflicts onn our nation.

Now, on to the real story.

FACT: Without Blue Dog/ConservaDem opposition, HCR would have been passed with a public option already

Despite the public debate, the fact is that the Republicans are not killing health care reform despite the screamers/teabaggers/ets. No, the Blue Dogs/ConservaDems are killing this reform.

So, I hereby pledge to make it my personal business to DESTROY the fake Democrats in the House and Senate, and I hope you will make the same pledge with me.

They say that even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day (or at least it did back in the primitive analog era), and in his recent comment regarding the health care debate being Obama’s Waterloo, Senator DeMint (R-Mordor) proves “them” correct. DeMint is using the famed 1815 battle as an analogy for a loss in an epic final stand, and while this may be enough to make him appear “smart” in Republican “intellectual” circles, it turns out that upon further inspection, there’s actually some depth to the analogies that can be drawn from the scene of Napoleon’s final defeat.

So join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll take a hair-raising ride through Analogy-Land! See the president play the role of a French emperor, the Public Option as a well-defended farmstead, and we progressives as the Imperial Guard. The battle isn’t over, and we don’t yet (and may never) share their fate, but regardless, now is the time to learn what could’ve been done to alter the outcome of the fighting.